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CNN airs debate on Trump and the KKK

By James PoniewozikThe New York Times

Thu., March 3, 2016

On Super Tuesday, two commentators on CNN argued about the Ku Klux Klan. On television. In America. In 2016.

It was a singular moment in cable news. This is partly because, until this week, the KKK’s loathsomeness had seemed to be a settled issue. But also because — as intense and unsettling as the argument was — it was substantive and illuminating in a way that time-killing cable shouting matches rarely are.

The conversation moved, perhaps inevitably, to an interview Sunday in which Trump did not immediately denounce David Duke, the former Klan leader who supports him. Jeffrey Lord, a former Reagan staffer, defended Trump, arguing that the Republicans criticizing him were patronizing African-Americans.

“I hate to say this about the Republican establishment,” Lord said, “but their view of civil rights is to tip the black waiter five bucks at the country club.”

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Here’s where things got real. Van Jones, a former Obama staffer, turned to Lord and argued that Trump was “playing funny with the Klan” by not deploring it with the same passion he directs at other terrorist organizations.

Lord responded that Trump had said enough, that Democrats were “dividing people by race” and besides, the Klan was a “leftist” terror group.

Again: This is 2016. And here was a white panelist suggesting that his African-American peer should go back and learn his history before criticizing someone about the Klan. Jones, calmly but with clear emotion, dressed Lord down.

“We’re not going to play that game,” he said. “When you talk about the Klan, ‘Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know’ — that’s wrong.”

It was five minutes of the most stunning TV of the year. Even the body language was fascinating: Jones rested a hand on Lord’s shoulder at times, seemingly less as a dominating gesture than to keep the situation from spiralling out of control.

The discussion about the KKK between Jeffrey Lord, left, and Van Jones was stunning TV. Even the body language was fascinating. (CNN)

It was as if he were simultaneously battling Lord and trying to defuse a highly unstable bomb.

Cable debates typically end up with two parties yelling over trivia. The Jones-Lord argument was arresting precisely the opposite way: Two men were arguing, furiously but in control, over something dead serious.

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CNN was absolutely right to let this fight play out. The 2016 election has dug up ghastly things in U.S. politics that many thought were long buried. But once the Klan robe is out of mothballs, it needs to be confronted under bright lights.

There is something frightening, in general, about hate groups becoming fodder for the modern cable news argument machine. Does anyone want to see TV take a “both sides have their points to make” approach to the actual Ku Klux Klan?

But here, anyway, amid the usual hyperbole of an election night, CNN delivered a scene of authentic passion over real concerns: the deep schisms among Republicans, the fear that vile hatreds are being resurrected, the anxiety that the vitriol of the campaign is bleeding into the larger culture. (Jones said that he’d stopped encouraging his 7-year-old son to watch the news.)

In a way, the argument was the 2016 election in miniature. It defied the political alignments we’ve become used to. (Jones, after all, was a progressive supporting an argument begun by a conservative fellow panelist.) It unearthed ancient, ugly things in our collective history. It was arresting, in part because it seemed it could all go terribly wrong.

It didn’t, this time. But this probably won’t be the last time in this election that the limits of cable discussion — like the limits of the U.S. political system — get tested.

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